Truth Campaign Targets Social Smoking, Hookahs as Cigarette Use Declines

The Truth campaign will debut a new spot “It’s a Trap” during MTV’s Video Music Awards on Sunday.

The Truth campaign wants to put out more than just cigarettes.

The anti-smoking youth campaign is for the first time tackling social smoking, hookahs and flavored cigarillos in its marketing efforts as smoking habits among young adults shift away from traditional cigarettes.

“This is a bit of a broadening of the conversation for us,” said Eric Asche, chief marketing officer of the American Legacy Foundation, the organization behind the Truth campaign. “We have started to see success around driving down cigarette use, but our fear is that it’s a a transference of the behavior to other products.”

Truth is set to debut a new spot called “It’s a Trap” during MTV’s Video Music Awards on Sunday that leverages social media star power and popular memes to highlight the dangers of light or intermittent smoking — say smoking a cigarette or two only during parties. A study published earlier this year in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, found that 25% of adolescents believe smoking on an intermittent basis poses little to no harm.

“For a lot of young people, they don’t even really consider that smoking,” said Legacy Chief Executive Robin Koval. “They’ll say, ‘Well, I don’t smoke everyday’ or ‘I don’t buy my own pack so I’m not really a smoker.’ They don’t identify themselves as smokers so they sort of give themselves permission to do something that we know is incredibly dangerous and deadly.”

Truth’s new spot, in addition to its “Finishers 2.0″ commercial that debuted during the Teen Choice Awards earlier this month, aims to curb the rising use of hookah and flavored cigarillos, products that many young adults believe are healthier than cigarettes. The CDC has warned that hookahs are at least as toxic as cigarettes.

“It tastes like tropical kumquats, so it can’t be bad for me,” one partygoer in the “It’s a Trap” spot says before a puking unicorn informs her she’s wrong.

Both the “It’s a Trap” and “Finishers 2.0″ spots were created by ad agency 72andSunny.

The use of e-cigarettes, a growing source of revenue for tobacco companies, has also been on the rise among teenagers. Truth’s new spots, however, don’t address e-cigarettes and are focused on combustibles such as hookah, flavored cigarillos and little cigars.

Truth is known for its bold marketing, perhaps most notably its 2000 commercial that showed 1,200 body bags being piled up outside a major tobacco company to signify the deaths that result from smoking. The Truth campaign is funded by the American Legacy Foundation, a public health organization formed in 1999 out of the Master Settlement Agreement between big tobacco companies and 46 states and five U.S. territories. Legacy spent $28.8 million on counter marketing, communications and government affairs for the year ended June 30, 2014, according to the foundation’s most recent consolidated financial report. Legacy spent roughly $14 million on measured media in 2014, according to data from WPP’s Kantar Media. The foundation will be changing its name to the Truth Initiative on Sept. 8.

Like other brands looking to reach millennials, Truth is heavily leveraging social media stars, such as YouTube personalities Ryan Higa and Rachel Levin, in its TV spots as well as for content on platforms such as Vine, YouTube and Snapchat. The campaign also recently announced a partnership with Vans to release a line of Truth-branded shoes and apparel.

“With this latest iteration [of ads] our primary focus is to be relevant in the conversation that’s taking place right now. Using the social currency to attack a social problem is really what we’re trying to do,” Mr. Asche said. “We will continue to bring back the shock and awe features of the brand, that’s part of who we are, that’s part of our DNA.”